


A Drawing Down of Blinds

by seraphim_grace



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Other, The Red Room, black widow candidates, pre-caws, scenes of horror and extreme violence, this is not a light fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 00:38:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3309188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/seraphim_grace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He falls, it's a perfect moment of grace, the slow slide of his fingers, numb with the cold from the metal and then that sublime moment of flight. For those long moments he flies and he accepts it with calm and a faint half smile knowing the last thing he sees is Steve's face, that the last noise in his ears is not the whistling of the air as he rushes past it, but Steve calling his name. Then there is blackness and silence and cold like the shattering of glass, and he's glad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Drawing Down of Blinds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keire_ke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keire_ke/gifts).



 

Hannah83 did a youtube version of this you can watch [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_FdM0eCdu4)

 

He falls, it's a perfect moment of grace, the slow slide of his fingers, numb with the cold, from the metal and then that sublime moment of flight. For those long moments he flies and he accepts it with calm and a faint half smile knowing the last thing he sees is Steve's face, that the last noise in his ears is not the whistling of the air as he rushes past it, but Steve calling his name. Then there is blackness and silence and cold like the shattering of glass, and he's glad.

 _Do you remember, Bucky?_  
_Do I remember, Steve, Will I ever forget?_

Nana Buchanan didn't live in Brooklyn, she had married out of it years before, and lived in a house in the Jersey suburbs. It was a small house with wooden siding and a drive way where Bucky's father parked his borrowed car, opening the door for James and Steve to climb out, all skinny limbs and messy hair no matter how much Ma tried to tame him. "Well, who's this mite then?" Nana asked looking at Steve, "he's too blonde to be one of mine."

But Steve and Bucky were already in the small yard chasing around the way boys trapped in a car for an hour do so they didn't hear the words tuberculosis and polio and don't expect him to live and sea air, they heard mite and Bucky's friend, and Steve became Mighty Mite hero of the radio show that played in their heads and it involved Bucky running around a lot more than Steve, whose undershirt was thick with grease and camphor, sat on the grass and wheezed.

They ate peanut butter on white bread and drank milk at her formica table with the metal edge, and the empty vase on the table, and beamed at the cookie that followed them, because Nana Buchanan made the best cookies, and when it got cold she had them huddled around her open fire, one on either side of her bony shoulders with her arms wrapped around them and the book on her knee as she told them the story of the boy taken by the fairies and turned into a warrior for the queen, and the girl in the woods who held him tight until the queen had to let him go, no matter the horrors she turned him into. She held him tight and never let him go, and Bucky reached across his grandmother and wrapped his arms about Steve, skinny bag of bones Steve with the promise he'd never let him go, that they were together until the end of the line, and Nana Buchanan had laughed and laughed.

Later, crammed into Nana's bed, the two of them twined together like socks Bucky wrapped his arms about Steve and Steve put his arms about his waist, the air between them redolent with the smell of camphor and goose fat and expensive eucalyptus that made it easier for Steve to breathe, even this late in the summer, "do you remember, Bucky," Steve asked, his voice quiet and clipped and fuzzy with sleep.

"Do I remember, Steve," Bucky said with Steve's head curled up under his chin, his larger, stronger body wrapped around Steve's fragility like he would shatter, "Will I ever forget?" And never was a promise, Bucky knew, even at seven years old, never was forever, and ever, and longer then, he'd never forget and the next time the coughs, loud barking paroxysms that nearly pulled Steve's lungs apart he would hold him as tight because Bucky can be as fierce as fair Margaret who plucked the double rose and held Tam Lin tight no matter what the queen did before the queen gave him away to a fate worse than death.

 _Do you remember, Bucky?_  
_Do I remember? Will I ever forget?_

Sometimes there is light. Sometimes there is not. He can not be more specific than that. Sometimes there is pain. Sometimes there are absences. He cannot process more than that. There is or there is not. There is the river or there is not. There is the searing cold of his arm or there is not. He had thought he had shattered like glass when he fell. He did not.

Sometimes there is a woman. Sometimes there is not. Sometimes there is a hand on his face and burbling words in his ears. Sometimes there is not. Sometimes there is a table. Sometimes there is not. Sometimes it is light. Sometimes it is dark. He wonders if this is what death is like.

One thing is constant. The cold is unrelenting, wrapped around him like a blanket.

He misses something, he thinks, he doesn't remember what. There is the cold, and sometimes there is light, and sometimes there is not.

He doesn't look at his arm. He is scared of what he might see. He is scared that there is flesh there. He is scared that there is not.

He's scared that he is dead. He is scared that he is not.

He feels like he is made of broken glass, the pieces picked up and put back wrong.

Perhaps he's dreaming when the woman touches his face and tells him they're going to make him strong again, perhaps he's dreaming when the pain starts. He can't tell anymore.

He just knows she's there, maybe. He doesn't care. Why should he care. He's dead. Or maybe he's not.

He can't tell if he's dreaming or not, maybe the dark haired woman is there with her heavy accent, or maybe she's a skinny little boy whose head is too big but has a smile like the dawn breaking over the alps.

"Do you know your name?" she asks him that first time, or maybe the hundredth time, or maybe she doesn't ask him at all.

"Tam Lin."

 _Do you remember?_  
_Do I remember? Will I ever forget?_

Time falls in on itself, like a child's building bricks swept by a parent's foot. He has no way of knowing whether it is day or night, there is only the woman who is sometimes there and sometimes not. Sometimes she talks to him. Sometimes she doesn't. He doesn't know, just that sometimes there is pain and sometimes there is not. Sometimes there is light and sometimes darkness. Sometimes noise and sometimes emptiness. She always starts by telling him the date but as soon as she is gone so is the date, the time, the weather. He watches seasons change through the window, winter, spring, summer, autumn, winter. He is broken. Like glass.

He sits in the bed and lets the world slide past him because sometimes there is pain, that catches him like rocks in the river, but sometimes there is not.

She laughs, her blonde curls bouncing as she calls him Zimniy, she washes his face with cold water, and pointedly never looks at the absence of his arm.

Sometimes she walks him around the room. Her English is perfect. Her accent is Manhattan smooth. She wears wool skirts and nylon blouses and silk stockings under shoes with a t-bar and gold buckles. Sometimes she is there and sometimes she is not. She calls herself Magdalena, but tells him with her Manhattan voice to call her Maggie as she gives him her Elizabeth Arden smile that never quite reaches her eyes, she sings soft songs that he doesn't understand. And the time slides by him.

When she asks him his name he answers her. Tam Lin.

 _Do you Remember?_  
_Do I? Will I ever forget?_

Nana Buchanan takes kids during the day for a dollar a week per child. She takes Bucky and Stevie to the market with her and no one ever mentions, to her face, that she always has different children with her. Bucky carries her basket and Stevie carries her purse, he's wearing her wool scarf around his neck, he has a cough that bends his body double and all they have is steam and honey to fix it, and the undershirt soaked with goose fat and camphor. She buys milk and peanut butter and bread and flour and margarine to make her sugar cookies that she gives the neighbourhood kids at lunch, the ones she lets Jimmy, she always calls him Jimmy, and Stevie help her make, each getting one fresh from the oven with warm milk mixed with a touch of Stevie's honey that he gets at night, mixed with extract of malt, which both of them pull faces at, but she assures them will make them both grow up strong. Then they get powdery lipsticky kisses before she turns out the night light and puts them to bed. She tells them about Tam Lin, about how he served the Summer Court to steal babies, but how the Summer Queen was going to give him to the Winter Queen and the Winter Queen was cold and cruel. Like the Snow Queen? Stevie asks, who put a piece of mirror into the eye of Kay and made him cold and leave, and Nana kisses them both again and tells them they have nothing to fear from the Winter Queen, because Nana's kisses will keep her away, and sometimes she sings for them, soft and sweet. Bucky remembers that.

Nana's a grass widow, but Bucky doesn't know what that means, not that summer. He knows that Stevie's Mom is a widow and that's because the government pay her something called a pension because Stevie's dad came home from the war sick and he died and now the government pays her, just not enough, but Nana's different, she's a grass widow. Bucky thinks its because her husband was taken by the Summer Queen who controls the forest and the plants and the heat and fire. He just knows it means that when she comes in, smelling of perfume and powder and liquor, though it was years before he recognised the sharp floral soapy smell of gin on her, as she undressed and pulled on her flannel nightgown and curled in around the two of them, long arms with red finger nails thrown over them, humming soft Ivor Novello songs until Bucky slides back into sleep.

 _Do you remember?_  
_Do I? Will I forget?_

Maggie is beside him when they move him. They put him in a wheelchair on the train, with Maggie beside him in a heavy coat. She is wearing boots and reads aloud from a novel. He thinks she is drugging his food, because she eats bread and cheese and he has borscht, thick and dark as blood, rich on his tongue and swelling in his stomach. She gives him tea, black and sour holding it up to his mouth, wiping at his mouth with a rag. He doesn't look at his arm. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it feels like it's not there, sometimes it's numb. She sings as she brushes his hair, keeping it cut short on the long journey, he's not sure how long but there is dark and there is light and there is warm and there is cold. She tells him they're passing Samarkand, that he should be delighted, after all Samarkand is where they buried his Tam Lin. He doesn't say anything. He tries to flex the fingers on his right hand, but they feel like lead, he tries to remember, to speak, to ask where are they going, she reads to him, reading books in English.

Sometimes he understands the doctors. Sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he drifts. Sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he is in the river, sometimes he's not. Sometimes he's in the summer of 1927 with Nana Buchanan and Stevie tucked tight between them, sometimes he's Tam Lin, sitting on the train travelling with Maggie.

She's wearing fur, it's sat around her face like a mane, and her mouth is Elizabeth Arden red as she smiles, opening a new book and sipping her vodka as she reads to him, "Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again."

 _Do you remember?_  
_Do I? I forget._

Maggie sings in Russian as she pushes his wheelchair through the building. It was a spa before 1918, in the far north, where the rich Russians went in the summer to take the waters and bathe, everything stinks faintly of sulphur and the water lies in thick pools, azure blue the colour of Stevie's eyes, he thinks, it's hard to remember, outside the glass and hot house the sea winds are frozen into thick spikes around the lighthouse, but the air inside is hot and wet, as Maggie sings, her voice echoing off the tiles.

_Bayu-bayushki-bayu, Nye lozhisya na krayu, Pridyot serenkiy volchok I ukhvatit za bochok. On ukhvatit za bochok I potashchit vo lesok, Pod rakitovyi kustok._

Sometimes he understands her. Sometimes he doesn't.

Sometimes there are needles, and sometimes borscht, sometimes vodka and sometimes there is dark. Sometimes there is Maggie, and sometimes there is the doctors with their face masks and safety glasses.

Sometimes there is dark - he likes that best of all.

 _Do you remember?_  
_Do I forget?_

The metal of his arm is cold, it wakes him in the night when it touches his skin. He screamed and screamed when they applied it, something they found in the crater the doctor said, they had nothing to lose the doctor said, I heard Americans were brave the doctor said. He can feel his fingertips like they are made of felt, soft and loose and not his own. His arm was lost in the river the doctor said. He doesn't know. He doesn't remember. Memories are like smoke between his fingers. He remembers Janet, no Maggie, no Janet and the bright Elizabeth Arden red spot in her forehead before her brains splattered against the tiles. Then there was Janet, who had dyed blonde hair and Max Factor pink lips. Janet has long Missouri vowels and wears white gloves even when she pours him tea, when she pushes the wood wrapped in leather between his teeth when he screams and screams as the metal eats away the nerve endings.

The doctors are proud, but he remembers Nana with the smell of her, vodka and talc and violets, singing softly in the night over Stevie and him, singing about wolves that come in the night, so he needs to be tucked up tight, soft and warm under the pines that grow outside her window in Brooklyn.

The dark is quiet, he lets himself drift. He does what they say to do. He screams in the night, but he's one of them, he's like Janet, Maggie, Janet, Dottie, Maggie, Stevie - he doesn't remember, he just drifts and the decade slips into the next.

He feels like an explosion in a church, the stained glass falling and leaving the stone intact. He feels like that, that moment where the glass falls but never lands. He stills falls waiting for the moment where he shatters on impact.

 _Do remember_  
_Do I forget?_

The doctor is different, harsh German syllables instead of the softer Russian consonants. There is a skull and a tentacles on his badge. He thinks he should know it, they give him another name, but he hears Maggie -Janet - Maggie - Dottie - Janet he doesn't remember which, singing softly about a boy held by fairies and the soft voice of Stevie, when all is gone but the colour of his eyes, and the warning about the wolves.

 _Do remember_  
_I forget._

They call him Zimniy or Jimmy, he can't tell. He is Tam Lin given to the Winter Queen. There is the cold, there is the dark and there is pain.

That is all there is.

 _Do Remember_  
_forget_

There is a man on the bridge, he stops, holding a disk of metal that rings against his hand when he catches it, for a moment the pain of his arm stops hurting, just whilst he holds it, the man, blonde, blue eyed, American, other, says Bucky and the world shatters like glass.

 _Remember_  
_Forget_

"I'm with you, Bucky," the man; Captain America; the target says, "till the end of the line."

Maggie kisses his forehead and calls him Bratyshka.

Nana smooths down his hair and calls him Jimmy.

There is pain, there is dark and the world shatters like glass and cold.

 _Bayu-bayushki-bayu, Nye lozhisya na krayu, Pridyot serenkiy volchok I ukhvatit za bochok. On ukhvatit za bochok I potashchit vo lesok, Pod rakitovyi kustok_ echoes in his head and the dark comes, soft and slow and sweet.

_Forget_

_Forget_

_Forget_

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth"  
> this fic is about the time that Bucky spent with the Russians before Hydra, and how he spent his time in the Red Room  
> it's about memory and the loss thereof, and how perhaps they didn't need to wipe him as hard as they thought they did. I used MCU's date of their birth so when they visit Nana Buchanan they are eight. 
> 
> Keire_ke wanted a fairy tale, I chose Tam Lin because the idea of holding on regardless suited them, Zimniy is the Russian masculine form of Winter (Zimniy Soldat means Winter Soldier) Maggie calls him Bratishka or little brother. Bayu Bayushki bayu is a traditional Russian lullaby
> 
> A thank you to the lovely alliceallice who corrected my Russian and was generally wonderful when I asked her strange questions about verbs and word order. She also translates my weiss fics into Russian and sends me all the art the Russian fans do - so I love her twice as much and we should be grateful, or I'll send one of the black widows around to rough you up


End file.
